Rescue of Ophelia and Nefertiti Among Us live at Stone Canoe, Online

Painting by Christine DeCamp

I’m happy to announce two poems up at Stone Canoe, Online. I’ve given you the url to the table of contents, in hopes you’ll give the whole line-up a read, for such line gems buried in the poems of my fellow contributors as “the sculpted mothers/who stood on the lawn amid maple leaves/ in fetal denial” (Nikolae Babuts, Lockerbie), “farm roads are clothes on other people” (Paul Doty, Pink Barn Eye), “jonquiled moon” (Gayle Elen Harvey, In Praise of the Dark), “Color your hair, darling, if you must” (Jay Rogoff, Dyeing), “calling the girl I was” (Kathleen Tenpas, The Calling), “Often I’m as helpless as a sleeping cowboy” (Thom Ward, And There is Beauty in Cracked Sidewalks).


Poem 1: The Rescue of Ophelia was inspired by one of Christine DeCamp’s paintings. I lived with the image in my house for several years before writing the poem (an earlier blogpost chronicles this process). Between then and now, DeCamp embarked on the journey of creating her own tarot deck. Ophelia now features as one of these cards. Visit DeCamp’s site to learn more about this beautiful project.

Poem 2: Nefertiti Among Us under-girds a parallel project as well. Robyn Beattie and I are fast at work making the companion photo poem montage, featuring Steve Pryputniewicz on the piano with another Bela Bartok selection and as always, Robyn’s mesmerizing and intricate photographs (featured in our three prior movies).

The print version of Stone Canoe just arrived in my mailbox; last weekend waiting for my daughter to emerge from an Easter Egg hunt, I sprawled out in the grass under a no-cloud sky and immersed myself in a rich field of poems, interrupted only by the occasional misjudged hops over my midriff (the two sons, 6 and 9, heavy enough now to efficiently knock the wind out squarely out of me…"just…let me…

…finish…this stanza…")

(after I’d said to my husband, “Why don’t you put away the iphone and just Be With Us…”

…the 6 year old slyly remarked, “Mom, why don’t you put away that book…and…

 …just Be With Us…”)

Cross-Pollination: Claudel, DeCamp, and Beattie

When I was seventeen, a postcard came in the mail (must have been early fall) of El Beso, by Rodin. I fell in love with the sound of the sculptor’s name. I wouldn’t end up in Paris for another 17 years, but when at last I stood in the glass-latticed house and looked at those white marble pairs of lovers held in the palm of the god who made them, I remembered my first encounter with El Beso.

Haunted by having seen the movie Camille Claudel (a version of Claudel’s struggle to master her own sculpture in the company of Rodin: his part in the tapestry of her successes, losses, her later failing mental health), I sought out her work in Rodin’s museum. In the room dedicated to her, I delighted in The Wave, a small study of three bathers frolicking in the water: sturdy-thighed women capable of a good snort when they laugh (1897, marble, onyx and bronze). Keenly aware of the energy emanating from our culture’s anorexic images (magazine covers, billboards, movies, etc), I found solace in those three strong life-like women.

Another image that lived in my home for several years quietly speaking to my subconscious was a painting titled The Rescue of Ophelia (by Christine DeCamp. A massive leaf borders the body of the floating Ophelia as she cradles in her arms an owl, Shakespeare’s last word trumped by DeCamp’s alternate reality. One day, at my desk, I found Ophelia—no longer mere victim, but a complicated woman with more than one possible past and future--had a thing or two to say. I fired the poem off to DeCamp who hung it on the wall with the original painting at one of her openings.

I live for such cross-pollinations. And for the inspiration which hidden worlds provide. Which leads me to the talented Beattie women, and the story of other images soaking into the ethers of my home. One is a photograph by Robyn Beattie of the swirling, scalloped ruffles of escargot begonias. Another is a photograph of a mermaid sculpture by Ananda Beattie (July 9, 1958-June 2, 2008). Ananda’s sea-girl gives me a dual sense of strength and vulnerability—thick ruts of clay hair stream down the mermaid’s back, her tail spooled thickly inward, chin thrust skyward, a maze of sea-salt across her chest. Sister Robyn took the photograph. Missing Ananda, we share a love of the image. And we play onward...from sculptor to photographer to poet...I’m back at my desk, urged there by other presences to record things left unsaid, with a new series underway, thanks to the manifest visions of Claudel, DeCamp and most recently, the Beattie sisters.

*******************************************************Robyn Beattie’s photography (Hidden worlds—A closer look at tiny treasures) will be featured in the show: “surface, detail LINE and rhythm” at the Graton Gallery 9048 Graton Road, Graton CA.

July 7-August 16, 2009

http://www.gratongallery.com/

To view more of Robyn's photograpy:

http://www.robynbeattie.com/

To view The Wave as well as background information about Claudel’s other “sketches from nature” characterized on this Detroit Institute of Art web-site as “poems of intimacy”:
www.dia.org/exhibitions/claudel_rodin/preview4.asp

Christine DeCamp’s paintings can be found at www.christinedecamp.com .